Currently, if a police officer or other law enforcement official wants to learn information about a particular motor vehicle, he must use the license plate number attached to the vehicle. This number must be entered into a secure database to protect the private information of the vehicle owner. By entering the plate number into the relevant database, information such as the vehicle's make, model, ownership, and other data may be obtained. Removal of the assigned license plate, or replacement of the assigned license plate with an incorrect plate, prevents accurate information about the vehicle from being obtained by these authorities.
Additionally, monitoring systems exist that allow companies or other enterprise organizations that use vehicles, to transport their goods or for other enterprise purposes, to monitor vehicle information such as the location of the vehicle as well as distance traveled per day and the amount of fuel used. The monitoring systems use global positioning satellite (GPS) receivers and wireless communication devices in the vehicles to send location and velocity information regarding the fleet to the base station of the wireless communication service provider. This information is then relayed to the monitoring party. This information must pass through the base station of the service provider before reaching the intended recipient. However, the intended recipient is usually affiliated with or serving the enterprise, not law enforcement.
Further, if a vehicle is speeding, methods and equipment exist that allow a third party to decelerate the vehicle. However, these requests must travel through a network service provider in order to be carried out thereby causing a lag time between when the request is sent and when the request is carried out. This lag in time may prove dangerous if the vehicle is traveling at significant speeds through heavy traffic or highly populated areas. Moreover, red light cameras sometimes have difficulty obtaining accurate license plate information in poor weather conditions such as in rain or fog. A vehicle running a red light or stop sign may violate the law without repercussions.
Increasingly sophisticated telematics systems have been developed to detect an emergency condition or activation, and in response, initiate a call to a call center. Systems have been developed for monitoring fixed customer locations or personnel at specific sites as well as for vehicle applications. For motor vehicle applications, for example, an onboard system monitors one or more sensors to determine when a crash has occurred. Upon detecting a crash condition, the onboard system activates a cellular transceiver to initiate a cellular telephone call to a call center of the telematics service provider (TSP). Upon connection to the call center, the system may communicate certain data, such as location determined by global positioning satellite (GPS) processing, identification data and crash related data. After the data transmission, the call is converted to a voice call in which a TSP representative at the call center can attempt voice communication with an occupant of the vehicle. The TSP also offers mechanisms for the representative to contact emergency service personnel in the area, to respond appropriately to the incident.
The existing telematics technologies do not provide data, such as vehicle identification, location, or velocity, directly to law enforcement personnel. Further, although the telematics unit in a vehicle may have information useful to law enforcement personnel, there is currently no way for such personnel to readily trigger a report of the information and gain access to it. Additionally, the TSP had no information regarding how long it will take for law enforcement, who may be the first responders in an emergency, to arrive until after contacting emergency service personnel.
In order to obtain information about the vehicle, a party such as law enforcement personnel must first contact a telematics service provider with a request for information about a particular vehicle. To identify the vehicle, the law enforcement personnel must use the vehicle's license plate information. This information may be inaccurate if the license plate of a particular vehicle has been switched with another. Moreover, confirmation that the vehicle information is correct cannot be obtained in a situation where law enforcement personnel wants information about a vehicle that has already driven by the law enforcement official's location.
In situations where a vehicle is parked illegally, law enforcement personnel must type or write in the vehicle's license plate number to issue a ticket. If the law enforcement official types or writes in an incorrect number, this error may not be corrected if vehicle is no longer parked in the same place. Such user error may not be noticed until it is too late to correct.
Additionally, law enforcement personnel cannot get current information regarding the vehicle's velocity and speed without using a laser gun pointed at the vehicle. A velocity reading may not be accurate without a clear view from the laser or radar gun to the target vehicle.
Further, when law enforcement arrives at the scene of an accident, law enforcement personnel must estimate the velocity at which the vehicle was traveling just prior to the crash using tire breaking tracks on the road, damage to the vehicle, and other indicators. These indicators have decreased with the addition of antilock breaking systems thereby leaving law enforcement with less information to use in assessing a crash.